This section describes approaches that could be employed, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or employed. Hence, unless explicitly specified otherwise, any approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application, and any approaches described in this section are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Working Group is addressing proposals for satisfying the stringent requirements of deterministic networks (e.g., minimal jitter (i.e., packet delay variation), low latency, minimal packet loss, and high reliability). The DetNet Working Group is investigating proposals for networks that are under a single administrative control or within a closed group of administrative control, where such networks within the single/closed group of administrative control can provide forwarding along a multi-hop path with the deterministic properties of controlled latency, low packet low, low packet delay variation, and high reliability. As an example of a deterministic network, consider a railway system: a railway system can be seen as deterministic because trains are scheduled to leave a railway station at certain times, to traverse any number stations along a track at very precise times, and to arrive at a destination station at an expected time.
Deterministic transmission in wired networks can use time sensitive networking (TSN) and/or audio/video bridging (AVB) for deterministic networks such as professional and home audio/video, multimedia in transportation, vehicle engine control systems, and/or other general industrial and/or vehicular applications. Neither TSN nor AVB use time slots; rather, TSN uses time-based shapers that allocate time slices and guard bands to cause a data packet to be sent or received at a given intermediate node (i.e., hop) along a path at a prescribed precise time that is reserved exclusively for the given hop; AVB can use credit-based shapers that ensure bounded latency transmit/receive queues in each hop without congestion, thereby ensuring a bounded latency.
Bicasting can be employed in industrial wireless applications where both reliability and timeliness of data traffic must be guaranteed. However, existing bicasting solutions do not address that different available routes can have substantially different source-to-destination transmission times that can result in a substantially large difference in latency between the available routes.